I finished my first functional Arduino project last month. It’s a typical first baby-steps ‘Hello World’ project in the Arduino world. A web-controlled thermostat.
Hardware List:
Adafruit CC3000 WiFi Breakout Board
Arduino Uno R3
Generic Hobby Servo Motor
1 10k Resister
1 Paperclip
1 DHT11 Temperature Humidity Sensor
Since I have a functioning Honeywell T87 thermostat (And, the fact that I currently rent the house, and do not wish to make any major hardware changes), I decided to implement a removable hardware interface with the T87, instead of going down the path of a more elegant relay-based arduino solution….
Adafruit CC3000 WiFi Breakout with Onboard Ceramic Antenna: The CC3000 hits that sweet spot of usability, price and capability. It uses SPI for communication (not UART!) so you can push data as fast as you want or as slow as you want. It has a proper interrupt system with IRQ pin so you can have asynchronous connections. It supports 802.11b/g, open/WEP/WPA/WPA2 security, TKIP & AES. A built in TCP/IP stack with a “BSD socket” interface. TCP and UDP in both client and server mode, up to 4 concurrent sockets. It does not support “AP” mode, it can connect to an access point but it cannot be an access point. (read more)
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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